Give me feedback on our new website!

Tbini87 · Dec 7, 2010

Hey guys,
my wife and I are in the process of completing our website. Check it out, and feel free to leave comments/feedback. We are still working on building our portfolio, and will have a few more family, engagement, maternity and newborn shoots in the next 3 months. We should also have a more images for the wedding gallery within 6 months (along with pricing). The website can be found at:

Home - Albini Photography

Thanks for stopping by and for any feedback!

burgo · Dec 7, 2010

clean looking, easy to navigate, not eye popping web design but it's simple format works well enough. My only criticism is the background image on your blog. That is seriously ugly and drove me away as soon as I seen it.

Bitter Jeweler · Dec 7, 2010

About Us: I would drop the "we are still learning, so feel free to share new ideas, locations, props, etc. with us."

People are coming to you for YOUR pro creativity.
Your website should exude confidence. If you're gonna walk the walk, talk the talk. :sexywink:

HikinMike · Dec 7, 2010

Thank goodness....no music!

My only comment is this: Read my SEO for the Photographer in my sig....unless you don't care about being found in Google and other search engines.

Tbini87 · Dec 8, 2010

Bitter Jeweler said:
About Us: I would drop the "we are still learning, so feel free to share new ideas, locations, props, etc. with us."

People are coming to you for YOUR pro creativity.
Your website should exude confidence. If you're gonna walk the walk, talk the talk.

It says "we are CONSTANTLY learning...", which is much different. However, your point may still stand. What do others think about that part in the ABOUT US tab?

Tbini87 · Dec 8, 2010

burgo said:
clean looking, easy to navigate, not eye popping web design but it's simple format works well enough. My only criticism is the background image on your blog. That is seriously ugly and drove me away as soon as I seen it.

My wife's blog... which was actually just created to show photos of our road trip and hobbies and crafts before we decided to get into photography seriously. I have no say in it... and don't necessarily care about the blog... but if it is a link on our site maybe we can look into upgrading. Thanks for the input.

Derrel · Dec 8, 2010

The site doesn't give me a clear indication of what areas your on-location photography takes place. That ought to be addressed. Also, the "Other" category is,well, not a good category. It deserves to be called something, or to be eliminated.

My biggest suggestion would be WRT to the thumbnails--it looks bad to have the tops of heads cropped off...that looks really,really bad. It looks as if the site is template-built, or that photos are just randomly sucked in and the thumbnail is randomly framed....cutting off the tops of peoples' heads just looks very bad.

What I liked was NO music! Horray! and FAST-loading! Very nice on those two points. I really do think the site needs to list a rough geographic area, very clearly, so people know WHERE you work...also, it adds some gravitas to have a physical location listed. And yes, drop the learning all the time line...that makes it sound like you're newbies.

deebert · Dec 8, 2010

I really like how your gallery is set up. I'm not a huge fan of the color scheme, but the layout is really easy to navigate.

In regards to what Bitter said about removing the "we are still learning" part - perhaps you could say something along the lines of "if you have particular poses, props, or locations in mind we would be happy to incorporate those into your session" so that the client knows that they can be an active participant. Also, the last sentence of that paragraph is worded funny and should maybe be rephrased.

I know you are asking for feedback on the website but I navigated to the blog and everything is too squished in the middle. The text on the right hand side is overlapping the pictures at the top which is pretty distracting. I have a widescreen monitor so there is no reason it should be compressed in the middle...not sure what is going on. Probably a setting in blogspot that needs to be adjusted.

Overall I think it will easily accomplish the goal of allowing potential clients to see your work and get information about how to book a session with you.

Boomn4x4 · Dec 8, 2010

Aestheticlly, its pretty good. Clean, smooth, easy on the eyes.

With that being said, programatically, the site is absolutly AWEFUL. It will be a search engine's nightmare and be pretty much ignored. Also, there is absolutly no HTML validation on your site. What this means to you is that any given web browser running any given version using any given plug-in or translator can intrepret the website differently. Because you have no HTML compliancy, what you see on your screen is very likey not what other people see on their screen. And the biggest concern, is that you can't have any reliance that anything on that website will even work when a new version of any of the web browsers come out.

Running your site through an HTML validator (The W3C Markup Validation Service), it comes back with 31 problems on your home page alone.... when there are only 63 lines of code total, that's a problem.

A perfect example of this.... If I look at your website through Internet Explorer 7, I cannot see the name of the currently selected tab... its just black. If I look at it with Firefox 1.5, I can see what tab is selected, but the rolling images cause the mouse hovers to lock up and I can't select another tab if an image is still loading. Also in Firefox 1.5, the alignment of your tabs are screwed up, they aren't consistent. Another problem, in Firefox the "Gallery" renders very slowly and actually locks up the web browser for a few seconds. I also noticed that there is no validation to your "contact" page. I can send a blank email to you. At least one of those fields should be required before the email can be sent.

Wheter any of that is important or not to you, really is up to you. But if you are planning on using your site as a form of commerce and reyling on it for any sort of financial gain, its certainly something you should consider. If you are going to put the time and money into a website, it should be done in a matter to attract as much business as possible.

Biggs88 · Dec 8, 2010

The only hint of where your located is in your about us story.

You need to have a clear address and phone number on page one.

People don't want some fly by night photo shooter. I would need to see an address and the places your willing to go to.

I.E. I live in Philadelphia. SO I would say something like:

Serving Philadelphia, Bucks County, South Jersey, and Delaware.

List the areas around you so the people looking at your site know where your willing to go.

Besides that, great site. Love the color choices and layout.

jaymac · Dec 8, 2010

Great site. Here's my thoughts (bear with me as I'm a tech coordinator so...

):

1. When I click a link (home, gallery, etc) it turns the whole link black and I can't see the text underneath it.

2. All of the pics say 'title' when I hover my mouse over them (I think it's called alt text).

3. I don't know if you can change it but I also think the thumbnails need work at not cutting off heads.

4. Bigger text on the paragraphs (in Investment, Information, etc). I think more of a outline type format where the headings are bigger than the main body of the text would also help. It looks like that is what you were doing, but I think all the text in general should be a size or two bigger.

5. Agreed also on the "constantly learning" line.

6. You have repeated the title of all the pages within the page (which I think is fine) except for the Information page.

7. Personal perference, but I'd move the Blog link to the end. People will click on the links in order and I wouldn't want to drive them away from the site by taking them to the blog page until they had a chance to look at everything.

8. Speaking of the blog page, as it's been said, it needs updated if it's going to be included. It should look similar to your website, and keep in mind it's a representation of you just as much as the website is.

9. Also, as mention, it could be a little more specific about your location.

Ok...that's all I've got. It's a little intensive, I know. But as I warned, I'm a technology coordinator so it's kind of my specialty...LOL.

Tbini87 · Dec 8, 2010

Thank you all so much for your input. A quick question:

If we were to add what locations we are serving (Butte County, Chico Ca, etc), where should we put that information? On the home page? Where would it fit?

I don't know much about coding or SEO, but I can talk to our friend who is helping us and he may be able to fix some of the current problems. Thanks again guys, and keep the comments coming!

Tbini87 · Dec 8, 2010

I just made some of the recommended changes in the ABOUT US portion. Added the geographic areas we serve and changed some of the funky wording in the last few paragraphs.

Tbini87 · Dec 8, 2010

Derrel said:
The site doesn't give me a clear indication of what areas your on-location photography takes place. That ought to be addressed. Also, the "Other" category is,well, not a good category. It deserves to be called something, or to be eliminated.

My biggest suggestion would be WRT to the thumbnails--it looks bad to have the tops of heads cropped off...that looks really,really bad. It looks as if the site is template-built, or that photos are just randomly sucked in and the thumbnail is randomly framed....cutting off the tops of peoples' heads just looks very bad.

What I liked was NO music! Horray! and FAST-loading! Very nice on those two points. I really do think the site needs to list a rough geographic area, very clearly, so people know WHERE you work...also, it adds some gravitas to have a physical location listed. And yes, drop the learning all the time line...that makes it sound like you're newbies.

Thanks for checking it out Derrel. I wish I knew more about web design to reframe the thumbnails myself but will probably have to wait til I get in touch with the designer.

As far as the "other" tab, any recommendations for what we should call it? It is pretty much a random category that we wanted to have just to put up fun pictures from around town or whatever. We are having a hard time choosing what kind of photos should go in there. We have nature, wildlife, around Chico types photos. Are there any catchy words used in photography to describe that kind of gallery? Nature/wildlife or something? Seems kind of cheesy to me, but I would agree that "Other" isn't much better.

HikinMike · Dec 8, 2010

Tbini87 said:
Thank you all so much for your input. A quick question:

If we were to add what locations we are serving (Butte County, Chico Ca, etc), where should we put that information? On the home page? Where would it fit?

I don't know much about coding or SEO, but I can talk to our friend who is helping us and he may be able to fix some of the current problems. Thanks again guys, and keep the comments coming!

At least change the title element (tag) from "Home - Albini Photography" to your location(s), what you do and the word photography or photographer....all in around 70 characters or less. Adding a short bio (location and specialties) on your home page will help your visitors and the search engines.